In this case the officers of the ward were very seriously to blame. They were indeed suspected of collusion, and without that it is difficult to understand how the prisoners could have effected their purpose. They must have been long engaged in preparing to make good their exit, and in the cellar were found great quantities of weapons, tools, cards, and other things.
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE WOMEN’S WARDS
Various outbreaks among the women—Drumming on the doors—The dumb cell—What happened at Durham—The Ladies’ Association—Greatest trouble from Convicts in passage to the Antipodes—McCarthy—Anne Williams—Julia Sinclair Newman’s extraordinary persistence in wrong-doing—Supposed to be mad—Returned from Bethlehem as sane—Mr. Nihil’s vain attempts to transfer her—No strait-waistcoat or means of restraint will prevail—Finally transferred to Van Diemen’s Land.
It is a well established fact in prison logistics that the women are far worse than the men. When given to misconduct they are far more persistent in their evil ways, more outrageously violent, less amenable to reason or reproof. For this there is more than one explanation. No doubt when a woman is really bad, when all the safeguards natural and artificial with which she has been protected are removed, further deterioration is sure to be rapid and reform hopeless. Again, the means of coercion in the case of female prisoners are necessarily limited. While a prompt exhibition of force cannot fail sooner or later to bring an offending male convict to his senses, a woman continues her misconduct unchecked, because such methods cannot be put in practice against her. Although in some cases the men have made a temporarily successful fight against discipline, in the long run they have been compelled to succumb. On the other hand, there are instances known of women who have maintained for months, nay years, an unbroken warfare with authority, and who have won the day in the end. Never beaten, they continued till the day of their release to set every one at defiance. That obstinacy which has passed into a proverb against the sex, supported them throughout, of course, coupled with a species of hysterical mania, the natural outcome of the highly strung nervous system.
A curious example of their strength of physical endurance, and their almost indefatigable persistence in wrong-doing deserves to be mentioned here, though it occurred some years later on. A strange fancy all at once seized a number of women occupying adjoining cells to drum on their doors with the soles of their feet. There is no evidence to show when or how this desire first showed itself; but in less than a week it had become general almost throughout the female prison. To accomplish her purpose a woman lay full length on her cell floor, just the right distance from the door, and began. She was immediately answered from the next cell, whence the infection spread rapidly to the next, and so on till the whole place was in an uproar. These cell doors being badly hung, were a little loose; they rattled, therefore, and shook, till the whole noise became quite deafening and incredible. Some women were able to keep up the game for hours together, day after day; in several cases it was proved that they had drummed in this way for several weeks. They soon worked themselves into a state of uncontrollable excitement, amounting almost to hysteria. After a time many became quite prostrate and ill, and had to be taken to the infirmary for treatment. The physical exertion required in the operation was so great that women so employed for barely an hour were found literally soaked in perspiration from head to foot, and lying, without exaggeration, in pools of moisture. In numbers the kicking superinduced diseases of the feet, the whole skin of the sole having been worn away; for it is almost needless to observe that very early in the affray shoes and stockings were altogether destroyed, and it came to be a question of bare feet. Several methods were tried to put an end to this unpleasant practice—strait waistcoats, dietary punishments, and so forth—but all without avail. In that particular instance the disturbances continued till the women had fairly worn themselves out.
Later outbreaks of a similar character were met and subdued in an altogether different fashion. The introduction of “ankle straps,” which confine the feet as handcuffs do the wrist, was found a highly efficacious treatment—this, and the invention of the “dumb cell.” From the latter no sound can possibly proceed; however loud and boisterous the outcry within, outside not a whisper is heard. When women feel that they are shouting and wasting their breath all to no purpose, they straightway succumb. But even more has since then been accomplished by purely moral methods than by these physical restraints. It has been found that the simplest way to tame women thus bent upon misconduct is to take no notice of them at all. When a woman discovers that she ceases to attract attention by her violence, she alters her line of conduct, and seeks to attain her ends by other and more agreeable means. The most potent temptation with them is the desire to “show off” before their companions. A curious sort of vanity urges them on. It is all bravado. Hence we find that when these tremendous “breakings out,” as they are termed in prison parlance, occur, they originate almost entirely among the women who are associated, in other words, who are free to come and go and communicate with one another. Separate them, keep them as much as possible apart and alone, and you remove at once the strong temptation to gain an unenviable notoriety at the expense of the discipline of the establishment. This was proved by the experience of later years. Thus at Millbank in 1874 there were only three instances of this sort of misconduct, and in the previous year only four.
Weakness in enforcing the rules, yielding too readily to the women’s tantrums, and letting them have their own way are soon taken advantage of by the turbulent spirits in a gaol. I had a notable experience of this much later in a northern prison, when one of Her Majesty’s inspectors. The female prison population in the north are a rough, headstrong lot, very difficult to manage, and at that time the chief matron was a timid person, who found it pleasanter to give way than to drive, and, of course, the warder staff took their tone from her. It transpired afterwards that it was the custom to let the prisoners who should have been in cellular separation collect together in parties of four or more in one of the large workrooms, where they could gossip and idle their time away for hours together, never doing a hand’s-turn of work, and thus persistently breaking the regulations. I had a suspicion that the female “side” was in bad order, and on one of my visits—I never gave notice of them, but dropped in always by surprise—I went immediately to that part of the prison. The warder who answered my bell and opened the door looked flurried at the sight of me, and I passed in quickly, to find the interior in some confusion. There was a scurrying of feet, a jangle of excited voices, and a loud banging of cell doors, clear indications that things were not all right. If I had any doubt, it was removed by the sight of the matron, who was stooping over a trap-door that gave access to the heating-chamber below, and pitifully entreating the women to “Come up all of you and be good girls.” I guessed what was wrong. It was the winter season, and the place below warm and cosy, just where such women would love to linger. There could be no doubt what was happening, and stepping across hastily I added my voice to the matron’s, bidding them peremptorily to “come up.”